A land -- and time -- of extremes

Vineyard Wedding!

The last 10 days or so have been a time of extremes, hence my sparse posting. There have been no horrible events, (in case that first sentence sounded dire) just a lot of difficulty working the land due to the incredible heat and at the same time, a bunch of wine country related events, which gave us a great excuse to shrug off some chores at the end of the day in favor of dancing in the vineyards and eating fine food.

This is about all we got.

My olallieberry crop was a total bust this season; I think the heat withered the berries on the vine quicker than they were able to ripen properly. At the other end of that extreme however, the canes for next year look extremely promising, so hopefully summer '16 can make up for the berries we didn't get this summer. I still have plenty of berries frozen from summer '14, so we will have pies. (this is our homestead's unofficial motto/anthem, by the way: We will have pies. So very important.) My cucumbers also seem to be a bust, never quite taking hold, while my zucchini squash crop is, as usual, leaving us buried in excess zucchini. So it looks like I'll be buying cukes to make relish this year and leaving squash on the passenger seats of coworkers' unlocked vehicles -- a typical thing.

An afternoon Industry party getting wild, and then wilder (see below).

The events and parties we've been to have been just wonderful. We had a coworker's wedding to attend last weekend, along with a birthday party plus an Industry Night that turned out more like a combination of Pride celebration and/or giant rave in the vineyards, and we danced until we dropped. The great thing about dancing is that you can pretty much eat all the food you want, drink what you like, and are guaranteed to burn it off on the dance floor. Sometimes it seems strange to be doing that at my age, but as long as there are people older than I am doing the same thing, I feel safe in participating.  Who knows, someday (probably sooner rather than later) I may not be able to, so I'd better enjoy it while I can.

So while we bake in the daytime triple-digits and hide from the sun after about 11 a.m., at night everything is warm and magical and people come out to have some wine, see their friends, and dance until the cows come home, or in our area, until the grapes ripen. Which, at the rate this heat is going, should start in a couple of weeks.

Annual tradition

First big zucchini of the season got picked last night, and so of course today is the first zucchini chocolate cake of the season, cooked in the solar oven.  Today there are at least five more zucchini, the first eggplant, a bunch of ollalieberries and raspberries, onions and peppers, all ready to eat. All around things are ripening and sprouting.  It's a time for abundance. Summer's just a breath away.

Life Goes On

Hmm ... eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini -- and herbs too.  Such delicious possibilities!  Ratatouille?  Farmer's Market sandwiches? Veggie lasagna?

It all sounds good. Now is the time when we pick up the pieces, dry our tears and go on.  Hard to feel bereft with so much edible bounty surrounding us, and so much of creation's beauty at our fingertips.

I did not make my friend's Celebration of Life service, which was several hours away by plane, but while working yesterday I did get a visit from this beautiful creature, who flitted and danced around me (not my image, but the same kind of butterfly).  

She reminded me that we are all just caterpillars, waiting to become eternal butterflies. And in the meantime....life goes on.

Vegetables, re-animated?

My Monsters?

Well, my cucumbers and squash are basically spent at this point, but taking a tip from our chef at the winery I decided to add some organic fertilizer into my raised beds yesterday, in order to see if I could kick-start my crops back to life for a few more weeks of "re-animation" production. (I watched "Young Frankenstein" on TV last night, and so basically today I feel like Gene Wilder playing scientist to Peter Boyle's monster, which in this case is my cucurbits. They're alive I tell you!  Alive!)

I'm not sure how I feel about this; on the one hand, a vegetable has a natural lifespan wherein it produces abundantly for awhile, then tapers off until there are no more blossoms to be fertilized and plants to be grown.  But if I can, through a natural fertilizer, push a little more fruition out of my plants, then I'm all for it. After all, it's only August and I'm not quite willing to let go of those fresh summer veggies just yet.  

In some ways, this is the hardest time of year -- we're at the clear end of summer, but here in the west the heat will be with us for at least another two months and the leaves won't turn in abundance until early December.  But everything has been moved up here because of our early spring; we will have grape harvest in the vineyards earlier than ever before, and some vines are already turning brown, defying the usual December leaf-change date.

It seems like most of the plants in this region have already given their best, produced their crop, and are now readying themselves to settle down for a nice period of dormancy.  If only we could all do the same.  But as long as we're in a protracted end of summer, at least I want some summer veggies, so I'm hoping Chef's fertilizer tip does the trick and gets my veggies started again.

After all, what's summer without zukes and cukes?

And at this rate, it's looking likely that I may have some tomatoes by Christmastime.

 

Still extremely green. Hoping for some Christmas red.

First fruits

First squash of summer!

Summer's first fruits are finally showing up here at the homestead, while the last of the fall crops are harvested.  The last of the carrots came out of the ground yesterday, along with some of the onions and radishes I planted in October, if you can believe that. The cool nights here really help keep things in the ground for a long time, which is great when you want an extended harvest -- picking a few here, and a few there, as needed. The carrots will be blanched and frozen today, along with some more mustard greens.  The rest will be eaten now, or in the case of the onions, hung up to dry and cure for use later on.

Big Ag is bringing home 20 pounds of apricots for me tonight, for canning and making preserves with this weekend.  And my first cucumbers and squash plants are on the vine outside as we speak.  I even found three or four raspberries and a couple of ollalieberries off my first-year vines yesterday, which I ate promptly, before the birds could find them.

Last summer at this time we were busy with two high school graduations plus packing and moving, so we weren't doing much homesteading, and it's funny how easily I forgot just how busy the regular routine of picking and canning keeps me, most days.  It's hard work, but it's rewarding work.  I've said many times that there's no sound better than that of a canning lid snapping into place after it comes out of the canner.  It sounds like satisfaction from a job well done and the promise of good things to come, all at the same time.

I'm working this Saturday at the winery -- hopefully indoors, because it's expected to be 103 degrees outside -- but after this I will be cutting back to working outside the home just one or two days a month (whenever the winery needs help most, if they do) and using the rest of my time to begin putting up our winter stores.

Good work, done in pleasant surroundings -- anywhere that happens, you really can't ask for anything more.